Lost and Found
by Biredy955
Summary: Long after the interrupted wedding, Lydia has doubts about whether letting BJ go was such a good idea. For his part, BJ struggles to get back to the girl he fell for before everything went to hell.
1. Beautiful  Lydia

He made me feel beautiful. That's the only answer I have for why I could never quite forget him. Where I hid myself in black and shadows, he wrapped me in red, daring the world to scoff, inviting them to look, to admire the girl he would have as his bride. He was the only man to ever give me jewelry or flowers, the only one who ever looked at me in a way that made my heart ache with the desire in his eyes. The smile on his face when he offered me his arm and said "shall we?" seemed to contain pride and radiated a sort of impish joy.

I could have done worse, and in fact, in the intervening years, I had. I sat in my room and stared at the bust of him my mother had made before she died. It wasn't quite right. The eyes were too large, the brow too prominent, but it was close. I traced the thin lips with my fingertips and sighed. He wasn't handsome, but he had had a certain charisma that sort of made up for it. And he had wanted me. I had realized that once I got older and had gotten over the self-loathing of teenage girls. If he just wanted out there were other women. Women who were slower of mind, more easily convinced to do his bidding. Women with no one to bring sand worms to devour him.

But it was to me that he had proposed by way of bargain. Perhaps he had come to me by way of coincidence, but he had decided to claim me for his own. I laughed bitterly at that thought. It was not exactly PC to speak in terms of claiming a woman these days. Indeed, men were often afraid to show any possessiveness, lest they be called abusive. But perhaps it was only the abusive men who were openly possessive anymore because the others didn't dare show it. I was fairly sure he wouldn't have been afraid. After all, he had been though the black plague, he was from a time when a woman belonged to her man, and where he cared for her and watched over her as he might a pearl of great price.

And now, alone, my parents dead, and my divorce from a true monster done with, I longed to be that valuable to someone. Even the Maintlands, my ghostly godparents, had been called into the hereafter, leaving me alone in the big house on the hill. I was utterly alone. Truly and honestly this time. Again a grim smile touched my lips and I turned away from the bust on my desk. There was no way he would every want me now. I was used and broken goods. I should have called his name when I realized that he had really and truly wanted me specifically, but the ego and hubris of youth had told me that I could do better. I had lived, dated, married, and had done so poorly. I had wasted what I should have given to him or at least held in careful trust.

Now it was too late. I longed to say his name, to intone it thrice like a prayer or a blessing, but I was afraid. I was afraid he had found another girl; afraid he hadn't but would not want me, afraid of his anger or disgust, or worse, his indifference. There had been times, when things were at their worst , that I had nearly managed to call him. I would say his name once, my heart filling with warmth at the security and safety he would bring with him, the way I could imagine him saving me from the hell I had gotten myself into. I would say it a second time, a bit more hesitantly, beginning to think of how I was unworthy of his protection, of how I had earned my husband s cruelty by not holding my end of a bargain that ultimately would have been of the most benefit to me.

I would then stop and remain silent, unable to finish what I had started, unable to call he whom I had no right to call, unable to risk his disdain. I had to have the hope, the dream that he cared, and deep inside, I knew calling him would prove to me that things were otherwise. He was best left as a fantasy, as a dream. I had saved myself in the end, anyway.

Besides, what would life be like, with a ghost for a husband? I had tried to imagine it at times, when a more mischievous mood had compelled me. Mostly my ruminations were comprised of sensations. Cold hands on mine, colder breath on the back of my neck, inhumanly strong arms around me, a deep rumbling voice in my ear in a room I had assumed empty. He had seemed playful; I could see him delighting in catching me unawares. I could also see him being devoted, despite his rakish demeanor. All in all I longed for him. I longed for a dead man that I didn't even really know. I couldn't help laughing at myself a little then. After all, there I was, mooning over a guy who I hadn't seen in over ten years, who had nearly killed my parents and who had swindled his way into nuptials with me. Still, what girl wouldn't be flattered by that?


	2. Confined  Beatlejuice

Edit: I figured out a way to add some more depth to this and to tie it into the toon universe, so I did. Enjoy!

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><p>One thing ya gotta know about Lyds, is that she's been through hell an' back. I should know, 'cause I've been m'self and I watched her go through hers. I know what you're gonna say about that. "What sort of man watches his babes go through crap ya wouldn't put a dog through and not step in?' Well, I'm getting to that, but long story short is that my Lyds is brave. She's also a damn idiot sometimes when it comes to pride, but she's brave too.<p>

'Course I didn't know that back when I met her. Back then she was just come kid that Juno, my boss at the time, wanted me to bioexercise.

Ya see, back then that was my job. Someone figures out how to get into the netherworld without clearance, and I go make sure they get out and stay out till they've croaked. Mostly scare tactics to put the fear of god into um. But this little girl... she couldn't have been more than eight years old at the time, she just stared at me. She stared and then she laughed. I was pulling a pretty gruesome lung tosser at the time too.

So I canned the theatrics and talked with the kid. She was there lookin' for her mom who had died a few weeks before. Softy that I am, I promised her I'd keep an eye out and took her back to the livin' world. But that wasn't the last I'd see of her.

No, miss Lydia Deetz started findin' her way into the netherworld at least once or twice a week from then on. I tried sealing up her entrance, she would just find another one. If I tried to put seals on her so she couldn't get in, she would somehow undo them. Finally Juno called me in for a meeting to discuss what we were supposed to do about it.

Old smoky was settin' in her office when I got there, leaning back in her chair with her red high heels resting on her battered industrial lookin' desk.

She sat up when I came in and lit a cigarette that she pulled from thin air. I reached into her stash while it was still open and helped myself to one too.

"So what's this I hear about a little girl you cant keep out of here, Beetle?"

I took a long draw of my smoke and shrugged a little. "Not much to it. Kid just keeps gettin' in."

"How?"

"Can't say. Standard gates mostly, but how she's opening 'em with no apparent powers and less training, I have no goddamn clue."

"Well we have to do something about it. If we can't keep her out, we'll just have to keep an eye on her while she's here. That brings me to this..." She grabbed a sheaf of paper from her in basket and handed it across the desk to me.

I studied the papers a moment before it dawned on me what they were. "You're reassigning me?"

"Like I said, we can't keep her out, so she needs a chaperon while she's here. Since you already have a bit of a rapport with her, you get the job."

"I don't do babysittin'"

"Now you do."

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "No"

"OK then, if thats the way you feel about it." She took the papers back from me and handed me a black envelope instead.

I looked at it for a bit. It had a red seal and had her name, "Lydia Deetz" written on it in silver chasing. "You gotta be kiddin' me. A kill order? Jesus Junes! She's just a kid!

"Kill her or keep an eye on her. It's your choice. Either way, she's your responsibility. Now get out of here, I have a client meeting in a few minuets."

I snagged the reassignment papers off the desk and tossed the black envelope back at her. "Just call me Captain fuckin' Kangaroo then..."

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><p>The next few years went fast. Lyds and I got pretty close. She had a hard time makin' friends with other kids, so I was pretty much all she had till middle school when she started gettin' close with a couple of other misfit girls. We never found her mom or figured out how she had been able to get into the netherworld as a kid, and we got into and out of a lot of trouble and a lot of weird shit happened, but it all turned out OK. That is till one night, when she was about 15.<p>

We were hangin' out in the woods just outside Peaceful Pines. She'd brought along her battery powered radio and was dancin' around to some song about burnin' leaves and black number one hair dye. One of the lines went "Oh baby Lilly Munster aint got nothin' on you" All I could think as I watched Lyds move was "Amen brother". Lyds was growing up. She was all black hair, dark eyes, and this cute little body I couldn't keep my eyes off of. Her little red spider web poncho had been replaced with a long body hugging dress with a slit all the way to her hip on both sides. She usually wore pants under it, but it was hot that night, so her moonlight pale legs were bare.

I tried to keep in mind that she was a kid still by present standards, but back in my day she would have been of marryin' age, and its hard to reset that kind of thing. We're all products of our times I guess.

Her hand on my knee startled me out of my thoughts in time to see her face close to mine, and in a split second she was kissing me. "Fuck..." Was my eloquent thought. This was bad... but it was also so good. She was soft and warm. Searing after nothing but the cold of death for hundreds of years. Since we were fucked anyway, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed back. We did that for a long time before she backed up. I raised an eyebrow at her, as that usually got her to spill what the hell she was gettin' at.

She just blushed a little and looked down, so I figured I needed to be a little more direct. "What was that for, babes?"

"I needed to figure something out."

"Did you?"

She nodded, and a grin spread across her face.

"So spill the beans. What did you find out?"

"That I like you... not just like you... but 'like' you like you." her voice got all quivery and her cheeks turned red.

"Is'at so?" I stood up and helped her up too. "Well, I 'like' like you too, babes." I kissed her and stepped back, taking a good, long, perhaps last look at her. "I gotta go. I love you Lyds."

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><p>Juno was waiting for me when I got home. I'd known she would be. I smelled her cigarette before I actually saw her. She was leaning against the front door jam with a sour expression on her face.<p>

"Nice job beetle brain," she walked up and smacked me upside the head with a force that was disproportionate to her small size.

"Wasn't my fault this time Junes."

"I don't care who's fault it was, Beetle! You should have prevented it! You shouldn't have gotten so close to her!"

"Yea, well what was I supposed to do? You told me to watch her, I watched her. For nearly eight years."

"You could have kept it professional! Like a tour guide or a teacher!"

"You told me to do a job, I did it. And I think I did a pretty damn good job. She's young. Young folks to stupid shit."

"But this is... this is against the codes! The brass are screaming for your heads! They want you and her both to pay for this!

"For a kiss? Damn, they must be hard up for things to do over there."

"Its not just the kiss, idiot. They've been watching you two for a while now, ever since she got you off on those charges. Love between the living and the dead is forbidden without permit! And she cant have a permit because she's a minor, and you cant because you... Well because you work for the department." She trailed off.

"Because I was a suicide."

"Yes."

"Fine then, let's get this over with."

"I didn't expect you to go so easily."

"I gotta convince them that she had no part in all this and make sure they know she didn't know what she as doin'. I'll take whatever they want to dish out, but they ain't touchin' my Lyds."

It was all pretty quick, considering. The trial took one day, mostly consisting of me getting the lightest sentence possible for Lydia. She would have all memory of me erased. That was it. I could deal with that. As for me, I was banished from the land of the living. But I could deal with that too.

The nice thing about working for the department is that you learn all about loopholes. Like the one that allows banished spirits to visit the other side so long as their name is said by someone there three times. It was meant to allow visits with others serving haunt sentences, but it would do for my purposes. All I had to do was wait till Lyds happened upon a place where such a sentence was being served and get that schmuck to let me in so I could talk to her. I had a plan. If one of the living marries one of the dead, they both get access to both places. All I had to do was get Lyds to marry me. Wouldn't be too hard. She had already fallen for me once after all.

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><p>I got lucky and the next year her dad up and moved the Deetz clan to Winter River. The house they moved into was the haunt of a couple of real dopes. They let me in, and from there I was able to get to Lyds. She didn't remember me at all. I did what I could to try and jog her memory, but it didn't work, and what I was doing would soon be brought to Juno's attention if the Maintlands had anything to do with it, so I took a different tack. I would marry her, then we would have eternity to get her to remember. So I tricked her into agreeing to it, and right when we were about to be man and wife came that goddamn sand worm and I was back to square one. Hell, I was back to triangle fuckin' zero.<p>

I was stuck in the waiting room for a while, till Juno let me out with two conditions. I couldn't be let into the human world by anyone but Lyds herself, and I couldn't affect anything in the mortal world. Well, I couldn't effect anything, but at least I could watch and wait for a chance. So I waited and I watched, and no chance presented itself. But at least i was keeping an eye on her. I watched her go to school, I watched her take pictures and go to dances and on dates. I never liked watching her on dates though, stupid living guys thinking they were good enough for my Lyds. Every time some boy tried to muscle in on her it pissed me off a little more. That's when I realized something. When I felt something, like the anger at these pipsqueeks horning in on my girl, I could push things in the mortal world. Not a lot, just a little bit here an there, put an idea in someone's head, move an object a few inches. It wasn't a lot, but it sure as hell beat just watching.

A few years later she went off to school and that's when she met John. She married the asshole a couple years after that when they both graduated. He was a jackass to her before they got married, but after that he got worse. The first time he hit her was just after they got back from their honeymoon. It pissed me off so much that I was able to yank the carpet out from under him and send him falling backwards, hitting his head and knocking him out. Lyds looked spooked and confused as hell, but at least she was safe for the moment. That's how it went for the next five or so years. He would hurt her, I would hurt him, it was a vicious cycle and Lyds was the one losing.  
>A couple of times she almost called me. I was so sure each time that she had come to her senses and that I would be out, free to get rid of that bastard, free to save her, to protect her. But she never pulled the trigger. That final b-word never came. I just assumed that she would rather live with the pain and degradation than deal with the guy who had tried to force her to marry him. I had to set and watch her cry her eyes out each night, knowing she would never let me help. It was fuckin' torture.<p>

One day a girl at her work noticed a bruise on her arm. The fuck of it is that that one had actually come from bumping into a freakin' light pole on her way to work. But the warm sympathy and offer of help was enough to get Lyds to spill what was going on at home. In a few days they had her out and living with her folks again in good ol' Winter River.

She started goin' to these meetings where a bunch of girls would talk about the assholes they used to live with. It must have helped her because she seemed to be getin' better. One day the broad running it started a conversation about things they wished they had done while they were being abused. Lyds stood up when her turn and what came out of her mouth knocked me flat on my ass.

"There is this guy, and well, he had proposed to me back before, you know? And there were so many times I almost called him, but I was too ashamed to because I didn't want him to see where I had ended up."

"Could you call him now?" the broad asked and I was right with her on that one.

"I could, but I m still ashamed. Besides, I m pretty sure he's moved on by now." Shows what she knew. I crowded the mirror I used to watch her and yelled at her that I didn't give a fuck where she was or what had happened to her, but as worked up as I was, it wasn't quite enough to get through to her. Still, now I had hope. She didn't hate me, she wasn't afraid of me, at least not like I had thought she was. This I could work with.


End file.
